Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle (22 November 1890-9 November 1970) was President of France from 18 June 1940 to 26 January 1946 (succeeding Albert Francois Lebrun and preceding Felix Gouin) and from 8 January 1959 to 28 April 1969 (succeeding Rene Coty and preceding Georges Pompidou), as well as Prime Minister from 1 June 1958 to 8 January 1959 (succeeding Pierre Pfimlin and preceding Michel Debre). De Gaulle was best known as the leader of the Free French and the liberator of France during World War II, catapulting him into the political spotlight. He then headed the French provisional government from 1944 to 1946, and he founded the Rally of the French People party. De Gaulle retired during the early 1950s, but he returned in 1959 to found the French Fifth Republic (the current one), and he strengthened France's relationship with West Germany while withdrawing France from NATO's military command to give France greater military independence. He supported conservatism at home and self-determination abroad, and he remained in power until 1969, when he resigned after failing to further decentralize the French government.

Liberator of France
Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille, France on 22 November 1890, and he graduated from the Saint-Cyr military academy before becoming a decorated war hero during World War I (during which he was captured at the Battle of Verdun). He took part in the Polish-Soviet War as a military adviser to Poland, and he rose in the ranks of the military before becoming Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defense on 6 June 1940. Upon the French surrender to Nazi Germany, he fled to London, where in a radio broadcast on 18 June 1940 (which was little noticed at the time) he called for the continuation of the fight, and proclaimed himself the legitimate representative of his country in opposition to Marshal Philippe Petain and the Vichy government. The self-proclaimed leader of the Free French, he became the leader of the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), effectively the French government-in-exile, in June 1943. His pride, determination, stubbornness, and his never-ending belief in his own destiny as the savior of his country enabled him to become a symbol of the French Resistance, but it also strained relations with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom found it difficult to accept his claim for France to be recognized as an equal fourth Allied superpower. Nonetheless, they gave him the privilege of entering Paris at the head of his own troops on 25 August 1944, and at Yalta decided to accept France as an equal ally in the postwar administration of Germany.

Rise to power
De Gaulle headed various provisional governments until 1946, when he resigned in opposition to the proposed constitution of the French Fourth Republic, especially the weak role the president was to receive. He founded his own political movement of Gaullism, the Rally of the French People (RPF), in 1947, but withdrew from political life in 1953 following the party's inability to achieve a majority. In the political crisis caused by the Algerian War, President Rene Coty asked him to take over, initially as Prime Minister, on 29 May 1958.

Together with Michel Debre he worked out a new constitution, which created the office of a US-style president who could appeal to the people directly by plebiscite, elected for seven years. It was accepted in a referendum on 28 September 1958, and De Gaulle was elected President on 21 December 1958. He ended the Algerian War through the Evian Agreements, though he was lucky to survive several assassination attempts by the OAS. He sought to unite the French public through the conduct of a patriotic and independent foreign policy, in which he aspired for French leadership in Europe. He insisted on the development of a force de frappe, a nuclear deterrent, which at the time was considered a quintessential underpinning of superpower status. France left the NATO high command in 1966, and he underlined his country's claim for world leadership on numerous occasions, such as his exclamation "Vive le Quebec libre" in support of Quebec separatists in 1967. At the same time, together with Konrad Adenauer, he inaugurated a special relationship with Germany, whose backing he considered essential for French leadership in Europe. Re-elected in 1965, his position was severely shaken by the student revolt in May 1968. Although unknown at the time, he fled to Baden-Baden to go into exile in Germany on 29 May, but was persuaded by General Jacques Massu to return and face the crisis. On 28 April 1969, he resigned following the negative result of a plebiscite on planned reforms of the Senate and regional government. He died a year later.